


Cocktail Napkin Stories

by black_ink_tide



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: AU's Gone Wild, Angst, Coffee, Coffee Black, F/M, M/M, Post Game, tragiporn, tumblr stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-08-16
Updated: 2013-03-22
Packaged: 2017-10-22 16:28:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 11,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/black_ink_tide/pseuds/black_ink_tide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stories written on the k-meme and tumblr as mini-fills. They're short enough to fit on a cocktail napkin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Not Lost.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt:
> 
> I’ve had a really shitty day and am currently in dire need of some hope. Everybody sometimes needs some hope, right? So I’d like to see a fic where somebody shows Anders that even if bad things have happened, even if he has failed, it doesn’t mean everything is lost and he can’t rebuild something, anything. And hopes flourishes :) I’d love it post game, but it’s not a necessity.

"I _need_..."

His face is buried in the straw-pillow, in the thick rough blankets, and I can barely hear him for all the pain in his voice. His shirt bunches high enough that I see the silver latticework of old scars, his back sloping long and skinny away from me, from where we are joined, where I am buried inside of him, where I pound into him, relentless and fast as if it means nothing. This is the only way he will let me touch him now.

"Please don't stop, please..." he looks back over his shoulder, " _please, Hawke, don't--_ "

I pull out of him, completely, and he collapses against the bed we've made for the night, a desperate nest of straw.

"I don't want to do this!"

"I'm sorry, Garrett," he turns his face away, down, and slowly starts to move away from me, so slowly, as if it hurts him to move at all.

I hold his arm, fingers curling against the muscle there that is still strong, still alive, and I feel him flex at my touch.

"I want to see you," I say, and he turns a fraction back towards me, "will you let me?"

" _Why?_ " he shakes his head, his voice hard and bitter, loathing.

"I miss you. I love you."

"You shouldn't."

 _I can't do this, Anders._ My closed hand connects with his chest, hard, and he grunts from the impact. His eyes are wide, curling defensively on his side and he looks up at me. I open my hand and put it against his heart, feeling straw and sweaty, dirty linen and scar tissue, skin and bone, and _him_ ; The beat of him, his pulse, his life there, uneven and frantic against my skin, against _me_.

"As long as I can feel this, Anders," I pull his hand up, straw sticking to the skin and the hair and the sweat on our arms, and press his hand against my chest, over my own heart, "and as long as you can feel _this_... we can keep going. It's not all lost, love. We can make this place better. We can. We will."

"I failed. I failed you. Justice--"

"Feel me," I pull him in harder against me, bending his wrist at a sharp angle in my grasp, "shut up, stop thinking and just _feel_ me."

He does, little by little, and his eyes focus on mine. He is on his back, and I settle between his legs, holding him against me, opening him as he lets me.

"Do you trust me?"

"Yes," his fingers grip at my chest.

"Do you think I'd lie to you?"

I press into him, inside, and I watch his face as he takes me in, "No."

I rock gently, his thighs against my sides, his body hot and real under me and around me, and he groans. The sound, as it always has done, completely undoes me. He is still mine. Still alive and, being so, still capable of great things.

"We're not dead yet, Anders," I say, my jaw against his jaw.

I feel him smile for the first time in months, and even though I don't see it, I know it is real. "I know."


	2. over the waterfall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt:
> 
> Anons, I'm shocked and appalled that no one has requested an "Anders Goes Even More Batshit Crazy" fic yet. Shocked and appalled. Especially considering the totally epic Hawke ones floating around on the earlier parts of the kmeme.
> 
> I'd love to read something where Anders has a Black Swan-style breakdown, or where he goes all Drusilla from Buffy. Or, because I'm sick and twisted and very, very greedy, the former turning into the latter sometime between Acts 2 and 3 (or post-game). His only moments of lucidity revolve around the manifesto and the mage/templar debacle, so basically everything we see on screen.
> 
> I'd totally love for F!Hawke, who still loves him wholeheartedly, seriously considering putting him out of his misery. I'm a bad person.

I thought, maybe they were the first words he ever heard.

Maybe.

He couldn’t remember that. Not even before Justice, before Vengeance.

He doesn’t even remember me now.

I say it, and there is closure to it, because I don’t think I’ll ever speak again.

If I can’t talk to him, then who?

“I love you.”

He looks at me and smiles, but it is hollow. It is a response he knows he should give me, but there is nothing behind it.

The spirit inside of Anders was hot. Too hot. It burned at the end. It scorched everything that was still him inside and left nothing but charred skin, burnt organs, the ashes of his memories, his life.

There was a war inside Anders’ body and he lost.

His smile fades slowly, and he turns his gaze to his folded hands. In the moonlight, I see every scar, every dear freckle, the wide round nail beds, the dusting of gold hair across his the backs of his fingers.

I found happiness in those hands. I knew who I was as he pressed his fingerprints against me, like runes that unlocked a part of me I’d never even imagined _could_ exist.

We sit beside the river. I led him here and he followed and his complacency made the bile rise in my throat.

He followed like a lamb. That spirit burnt the fight out of him before it went.

I want him to be present. I want him. One last time.

I put a small plank of wood over his thighs. A desk in a forest.

A clean piece of paper; our last clean piece.

And his quill.

Black ink from a dented flask. It will have to do.

But he holds his quill in his fingers and I see the tension of muscle memory, a tremor in the feather.

“Hawke…”

He doesn’t look at me but he knows I am there. His hand moves across the paper, scrawling, scratching, tattooing the ink into the paper as if it were his own flesh.

Nonsense. Not a manifesto. Not even real words. Rib bones and tattered fragments and shards of some idealistic bloody crusade he can’t really remember anymore.

But he’s here. In a way. He is here when he holds that quill and writes.

“Maker, I love you, Anders,” my hands shake. I touch his arm, which is unnaturally cool.

“How many, Hawke? How many did I kill?”

I press my forehead against his hard shoulder, feeling the shift of muscle as he writes.

“I don’t know.”

“How many mages?”

“I don’t know.”

“How many templars?”

“Never enough.”

He laughs.

“I want to drown you in the river, Anders.”

He laughs again.

“That’s why I brought you here,” I can hardly speak, my throat tightens around the words, “I brought you here to drown you.”

“I’ve always wondered what that would feel like. Do you think it feels better or worse than burning?”

“Better.”

“Like falling asleep,” he writes off the edge of the paper, viciously scratching a dry quill into the board, “I know what burning feels like.”

“I know.”

“You can’t do it?”

“No. I can’t. I keep trying…” I wrap my arms around him, around his chest, “but then I bring you back and… I can’t.”

He writes off the edge of the board, digging into his own thigh.

I lift his hand and place it back on the edge of the paper.

“How many did I kill, Hawke?”

“A thousand.”

“That’s not so many. I thought it was more,” there is a low rattle in his chest and I feel it in my arms, “shall we swim tonight? I’d like that, Garrett.”

“No. Not tonight, love.”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“Yes. Maybe tomorrow.”

I lift his hand, which scratches into the air, writing nothing into nothing. I take the board and the paper from him and he stills. I take the quill. I suck the bitter ink from the end of it and put it away.

“ _I love you._ ”

I’ll never speak again.

He doesn’t respond.


	3. Last Thoughts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt:
> 
> Hawke loves Anders but he cannot bring himself to forgive him or even show him mercy after he blew up the Chantry. What is Anders thinking about as he lies there, bleeding to death after Hawke stabbed him and left him behind to die alone?

_Snow melting._

Rivulets of cold water set free by sudden warmth. Drops into the river, river to the lake, the lake to the...

An ocean of black blood spills out and I float weightless in it. There was this ocean of blood in me and now it's here. An ocean of iron and ash. It was in me, but not mine for a long time. I carried it, bore it like a wineskin. I did what it wanted. This is Warden's Blood. Vengeance's Blood.

It was Hawke's blood for the taking. It pulsed to the surface of this skin for him, on command. It immolated, for him. And here it is, so much, by his hand.

He could have made this quick. Could have slid that blade into my heart, with mercy, but instead this. _Hawke, my lung is torn_. I am filled with vipers and black ice. I will not heal, will not mend, because this is... Maker, this is what I _want_ and I bleed and bleed and...

I am not snow. I am not wine. I am not Vengeance.

I was a man called Anders. I was Anders. Anders. I was happy, once. That's enough.

 _Fresh snow falling, replacing what was lost. Burying me. Bury me._


	4. Second Last Thoughts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt:
> 
> Hawke loves Anders but he cannot bring himself to forgive him or even show him mercy after he blew up the Chantry. What is Anders thinking about as he lies there, bleeding to death after Hawke stabbed him and left him behind to die alone?
> 
> (Second approach, Female Hawke... er, slightly off topic ;) )

“If it makes any difference, I’m glad it’s you.”

“Who _gets_ to make you a martyr?” she gutters, a candle going out.

It is coming. I see it there, at the edge of the world. A tiny, glint of silver in the dark.

She kneels in front of me, her face tilted up. Beautiful. And so hurt. Ash falls, dusting her cheeks. Ash from a dead world – bodies and mortar and useless paper. I brushed her skin clean with my thumb and joined her, hard ground under my brittle knees.

The others have walked away to a polite distance in the shadows. All of them but one. He paces and gnaws the air, waiting for her to do it. He would rip my head off if she let him. _I_ might even let him.

But she won’t.

Maker, I can’t even look at her.

“I have to do this…” she sighs defeat quietly against my ear, a warm jagged breath. My neck bends stiffly under her hand. Her fingers trace familiar tracks against my scalp at the base of my skull. She did this in bed, when my brain spun too quickly, when I couldn’t sleep. Tracing secrets against my skin, under my hair.

“I know.”

“Where will you go?” It is a pure question. Childlike, “Where will you be?”

As if, maybe, she might try to find me. I pull her closer.

“Hawke,” the growl from behind me is disembodied, an intrusion I can do nothing about, “Kill it already.”

“I’ll stay,” her voice muffled, “I’ll stay until you’re gone. You’ve been alone for long enough.”

I nod, hearing the tension of a bow strung behind me. A precaution.

I kiss her head. She deserved better than me. I hope she finds better after me. I hope I’ve changed the world for her. I hope it’s worth it, for her. For them. For the children she might have some day. With someone else. Someone better. Someone whole. Maker, I want that. I want that for her. In moments of hollow optimism, we talked about family. Children. Her face glowed, whispering about hypothetical babies, and she wanted them with me. _Go and have them and be happy. I did this for them._ I am gripping her small back so tightly, it must feel like fear, like I am afraid it will hurt.

I am not afraid. I am gone already. But she will stay here. And I want--

She’s so skilled with a knife, my Hawke. I hardly feel anything. No pain.

Just… a chill. Like a window left open in the dead of winter. All the heat in the house is slipping out.

She follows me as I fall to the side. Her arm is beneath my ribs, her fingers still wound in my hair. I distantly feel the leather strap that kept the hair out of my face give way. She takes it. She keeps it. I smile. My Hawke, always taking things. Things that have no value. Pieces of trash. Lost things.

I cannot see her. I cannot hear her.

But she is there, with her blade in my side, her fingers in my hair, her lips against my neck. She traces patterns against my scalp. Secrets. We are in bed. I am asleep in her arms.


	5. Liar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt:
> 
> Something in the style of Richard Siken or e.e. cummings.

I

 **I opened my eyes  
blue-brown-blue again  
Born, I was a**  
 _liar_.

 **And I set fires, and ran**

 

II

he cuts, he cuts his hair  
to change the way he looks and to leave something behind to bury with the rest of the  
dead

men

 

 _here_.

The tug against his scalp, pulled-hair, part of his body. Serrated blade forward-back-forward  
And slack, limp release.

A wound opened his chest, through ribs that cracked like burnt sugar and then mended, around a metal blade that jutted and shoved, tore and demanded and was ultimately.

Ignored.

death did not hold him

Fistfuls of yellow hair, spidersilk, sticking to blood and other fluids between his fingers

And he cuts more, uneven, unbeautiful,  
It all floats on, To wet grass  
To wet bodies  
 _I am dead._

He thinks and a listener inside hears him.  
 _We are dead_.

 

III

 **I opened my eyes**

warrior spread open in a bed  
with my blankets  
 **blue-brown-blue again**

He begs for sensation in words that never leave his chest

Deep earthquakes that pull me toward the  
cracks inside of him. I crawl inside, down into  
the center, where there is no light, and I glow there  
in his dark

 **Born, I was a liar.**

I lie, out out out, when I speak I  
lie

But lips pressed to the thin skin around his eyes,  
My _Liar_ -tongue to skin and salt and pain and fissures,  
I’m honest here but only because there is  
Not enough space for those lies to breathe with a voice

when you are inside my throat

 

 **And I set fires, and run**

You should have know. I am what I have always been  
A man who burns and runs.  
And this fire?

This fire needed to burn  
but I’m sorry I burnt your  
wings;

I beg without begging, because I know over all

too well.

replace that room in me, with a  
knife, with anything you want. Stay inside.


	6. It Wasn't Supposed to End This Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From tumblr:
> 
>  
> 
> saetiaa asked you:
> 
> what if there was a situation where fenris had to/chose to kill garrett despite being in love with him? i mean i thought the scene where he killed his sister was pretty incredible and made me love him even more.

_It wasn’t supposed to end this way._

_Not with him on his knees in a sewer._

“Do it,” his voice is soft, gentle even.

She’s never heard him _gentle_ before. Snide, yes. Diplomatic. Encouraging. Saccharine. But never gentle.

Neither of them says anything but Isabela sees something slide into place in Fenris, even with his back to her. She sees it in his spine, the set of his shoulders. She sees Fenris’ mask even with his face, his entire being focused on Hawke and away from her, from them, from the deal that’s already been made.

_She can never know._

That’s what Hawke said to her, to Isabela, the last time his blue eyes met hers over Fenris’ shoulder.

In the dark.

In a sewer.

She promised him that Bethany would never know what he’d done.

_It wasn’t supposed to end like this._

_With Hawke, on his knees, having made a deal he couldn’t take back._

Not that he would have anyway.

He’s only looking at Fenris now and after Fenris turns his head towards her and barks, ragged, “Leave us,” she doesn’t exist for either of them.

When she leaves the small, dank room, looking back despite her better judgment, she swears that Hawke is smiling, looking up at Fenris, calmer than she’s ever seen him. She closes the door behind herself.

She doesn’t understand why but as she walks towards the other room, Isabela imagines all the other times Hawke has looked at Fenris that way. Kneeling in front of him. Close to him. In a world of just him. All the hard edges eased out of his face, a gentle smile curling chapped lips over crooked teeth.

She imagines Hawke tells him, again, so softly, that he’s tired.

She imagines that Fenris says nothing but touches his face, the rough singed line of his jaw, with a clawed finger.

She pushes open the broken door and in the light of the last lantern Hawke lit, she sees Bethany is where they left her before the deal was made. Lying on the cleanest part of the floor with her hands folded over her still chest, the silver chain still arranged between her bloody fingers where Hawke had so carefully placed it.

Their mother’s locket. He gave it to her.

Isabela kneels beside Bethany and adjusts her torn scarf until she hears Fenris’ blade hit the floor. The sound echoes from their room (their world) to the smaller one she’s in with Bethany’s body, and she believes for as long as it takes to stand up that Fenris couldn’t do it. Even with Hawke asking him so calmly.

So gently.

But no argument follows.

No protestations. No dramatically shouted, “If you love me, you’ll do this, Fenris!”

No fight. Nothing.

Just silence until the sound of Fenris stumbling out of the room alone. Breathing hard, painfully.

And she understands that in the end, he didn’t need the blade.

Bethany gasps behind her, breathing for the first time in hours, her lungs no longer crushed but whole. Alive. She goes to her, holding Bethany close as she grips her arms tightly, frantically, but says nothing.

_Fenris is silent outside of the room, on the other side of the thin broken door._

_Hawke made a deal. His life for Bethany’s._

_Isabela made a promise._

_And Fenris—_

Isabela pulls Bethany in tighter, saying to her gently, “It’s okay, beautiful. Just breathe,” and she thinks, this is not how this story was supposed to end.

In a sewer.

With Hawke’s heart in Fenris’ hands.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From tumblr:
> 
> Coffee, Black-verse Nanders. For the unsinkable missl0nelyhearts who asked for, “ANDY. ANDY ANDY ANDY. neckties.”

“I can’t—”

“Shut. _Up._ ”

Andy smiles against the side of Nate’s neck, “No.”

Nate pulls back from him for just a beat, a breath, looking him in the eye—

_That’s the thing_ , Andy thinks, _Nate looks him in the eye._

Standing up, and to be fair often lying down, they are level.

They’re the same height. Exactly. Even like this.

Even dressed in _shamefully_ expensive clothes with Nate pinning his shoulders against the wall in a backroom of this _shamefully_ elite club that’s hosting an event for his _shamefully_ trite series’ _shamefully_ contrived final installment.

Even like this Nate can, and does, look him directly in the eye.

Especially like this.

“What?” he growls, softly.

Andy lets his eyes close, smirking, “I was going to say… I can’t remember the last time I saw you in real clothes.”

His lips are against the shell of Andy’s ear, “I wear—”

“Scrubs, Nate, are not real clothes,” Andy sighs, letting Nate’s well-dressed thigh between his own, “But you clean up—”

“Shut up, _Andrzej._ ”

He opens his eyes, blinking slowly, at the sound of his name — not the Americanized version, not a nickname, not even close to the same embossed in raised, obnoxiously reflective letters on the dust jacket of the books in the other room.

Nate smiles and Andy wraps his hand slowly in the end of his tie, pulling him in, groaning quietly when his weight follows that pull, thigh and hip and cock pressing against him, pushing him harder against painted brick.

Pushing the breath out of him.

“You clean up well, Nathaniel.”

Nate looks Andy in the eye and there’s no shame there.

Not between them.

Not in the dark when they can use each other’s real names.

He slides the knot of Andy’s tie loose.

Loose, Andy grins, unguarded, feeling the beat of the live band in the next room in his spine, but not off.

They’re going to have to go back in there, sooner rather than later because there is a cake, and Nate is, if nothing else, a pragmatist.


	8. Good.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From tumblr:
> 
> Had some college-era Gare-Bear/Tomwise stuck in my head this week like a pop sing that wouldn’t leave me alone!
> 
> More Tomwise in the world, please? Yes and yes.

“I messed up,” I’m panicking but at least he seems calm – calm is good, “…didn’t I?”

“You’re not sure if you messed up?”

“I…” I look at the floor, or, at the small ocean of thick white soap bubbling up and over where I know the floor is… somewhere underneath it, “No. I know.”

And that’s when Tom smiles.

“Garrett, it’s fine. We’ll clean it up and fix it,” he’s literally rolling up his sleeves, “or… maybe I’ll fix it. You don’t seem so great at the whole ‘fixing’ thing.”

He pulls his hair back into an elastic at the back of his head and a few dark pieces immediately come loose around his face and the smile’s gone again. He’s hard to read most of the time. Tom’s a stoic guy, as much as any real person can be stoic… or, I mean, as much as any real twenty year old can be stoic. And for the first couple of months we were working together I was pretty convinced that he hated my guts. And the rest of me. Just… mostly my guts.

It didn’t help that when I started I had literally no clue what I was doing. I had, you know, had coffee in my life. A lot of it. And… my dad had kind of… well, Dad was a coffee enthusiast and I knew things about it because of him. But… the equipment? No clue. The acronyms and abbreviations? The lingo? The things people would ask for in really serious ways at 6:00 in the morning? I mean, coffee gets complicated. It’s not always just… pour it in a cup for me, big guy. No… like… okay I maybe cried once or twice in the backroom when I messed up somebody’s super intricate latte and they yelled at me. Those were dark days.

Also, again, when I burnt my hand. I definitely cried then too. I still have a scar.

But even when I was being a mess, Tom was there and Tom just… fixed things.

When I burnt my hand and even when I thought he hated my guts—

“Fucking hell, Garrett,” he sighs, looking over his shoulder at me as the extent of my misunderstanding of the washing machine-to-soap ratio sinks in, “you’re a force of nature.”

I smile. Or try to.

I know Seb’s going to be wondering where I am… I’d made plans to come over to his place tonight, to sleep over, even though I’ve got that 8:00 am theory class (in which, of course, I’m doing terribly…) but I can’t leave until the place looks fine. And Tom stays, too. We clean up the mess in the coffeeshop together. It’s late, way past closing and way past the time that we both normally get to leave. The shop’s eventually going to be open 24 hours to meet the demand on campus. Athenril’s ambitious like that. For now, tonight, I’m glad that we can lock the doors and pull the shades and that the only two people who need to know that I have somehow made it to twenty without really learning how to load and operate a dishwasher are me and Tom.

We’re there on the floor, late at night, kneeling in soap bubbles and water when I make him laugh for the first time.

Not just smile… but laugh.

And I like it. 

…

“You have such a great view this year, Sweetheart.”

I really cleaned the room up before my family arrived. Like… I’m not a messy person but I seem to just accumulate things. Broken things and junk that seems really important at the time but then a week late I’m looking at a brass monkey figurine and trying to figure out why I thought it was so important to take home.

Like I’m ever going to do anything with this brass monkey.

Ever.

But, anyway, I at least organized my junk collection and the room is clean and smells like air freshener and the windows are open.

I even made my bed.

My dorm room bed. Extra-long, which still isn’t long enough for me. My bed where Seb and I…. where, uh, that happened. For the first time in my life. That bed.

That bed that my baby siblings are now sitting on together which seems really kind of wrong and weird to me now.

But at least it’s made. And I washed the sheets. Twice. Just in case.

“I like it,” I say, “It’s a cool floor.”

She breathes in deep, “Okay, so, where do you want to go eat?”

“Red Robin,” Carver answer for me.

“Actually—”

“Red Robin,” he says again, picking at a scab on his knee.

I swear to god, Carver Hawke, if you leave a scab on my bed… “I mean… there are better places around. I went to this place last week, an Indian place, with Tom that was really good.”

“I could go for Indian,” Mom says. Bethany, looking up from her copy of Little Women (which is actually my copy of Little Women) agrees. Carver’s stuck on Red Robin… but he’s been out-voted and the Hawkes are a democratic people.

“Will Seb be coming?” Mom asks as I close up the room.

“Uh… no. He’s got a thing. His…” I shake my head, “He’s busy this weekend.”

“Oh,” she smooths a cowlick at the back of Carver’s head, “that’s too bad.”

When we get to the place, which is within walking distance, he’s there.

Tom, not Seb.

He’s sitting by himself at a window-table.

I see him before we go inside but he doesn’t see me.

Not until I’m at the counter with my Mom and Bethany and Carver.

He smiles at me and I say something stupid about how the food is so good, about how I wanted to share the experience with my family, about rice…

And he laughs, and shrugs, and recommends the special.

We eat at the table next to him and he leaves before we’re done waving at me as he goes.

…

We’re under the stairs outside. Tom’s smoking and I’ve got a mostly finished 40 in my hand… in both my hands actually. I’m holding on.

I’m drunk.

And it’s loud inside so we came out here. Together. Because we came to the party together and I want to talk to him because I like hearing him talk and answer my questions because Tom just knows stuff and I think that’s really amazing because the longer I’ve been in school the more I feel like I don’t know anything—

“Hey, Tom,” I say outloud, “You know what I think I’m going to call you?”

“What?” he drops his cigarette to the cement and smashes it under his shoe.

“Tomwise,” I take a drink, “because you’re real wise. And named Tom.”

“Tomwise?” he smiles, with straight white teeth, looking at something past me with dark green eyes, “Like Samwise?”

“He’s my third favorite hobbit,” I nod.

“Third favorite, huh?”

“Mmhmm,” I nod again, closing my eyes and thinking of hobbits, “right after—”

He kisses me and without thinking about it I shut up and kiss him back.

Because he’s kissing me.

And because he’s Tomwise.

And because I want—

Tom. Pushing me back against the outside of the house. Tom.

Not Seb. Not my boyfriend.

Not—

“Whoa,” I say, out loud, against his mouth, “I… what are we doing?”

I can hear him swallow. Someone opens the sliding glass door next to us and the sound from inside the house pours out for a second before the person ducks back inside and closes the door again. Neither one of us moves. He’s still close, close enough that I can still taste the smoke and tobacco in his breath, on his tongue.

“I’m with someone,” I say, covering my lips with my fingers like that’s going to help or something.

He shakes his head, “He doesn’t deserve you.”

“Yes he does,” I push him back.

“Where is he, Garrett?”

“He…” I don’t know. Tonight, I mean. Maybe I knew before the beer. Maybe I forgot tonight, “Um—”

“You know that he…” he licks his lips and frowns, serious and sad-eyed and Tom, “you shouldn’t be so… loyal. He’s not. If I’ve heard, then you’ve… Do you know that? That he…”

“I don’t want to be like that…” I shake my head, set down my bottle on the ground and take a long time to stand up again, “I… I’m happy. I, like the way things are. I don’t want them to change, or get… bad.”

“I like you. A lot. I think you’re…” he swallows again but he’s far enough away that I can’t hear it anymore, “good.”

“I have a boyfriend, Tom.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want things to change.”

“They’re changed anyway.”

“I’m not a cheater.”

“I know that too.”

We do not talk again after that.

I walk home from the party by myself.

There’s one new email waiting for me when I get back to my room.

It just says ‘I’m sorry.’

…

I didn’t recognize him when he came into Bianca’s. He has different hair. And he looks like a grown up.

I wonder if I look like a grown up.

I don’t think I do. I think I look like a slightly wrinkled kid still. A big kid, but still…

“You know,” he says to me, standing on the other side of the counter, “when I heard you were the Champion of Kirkwall, I was surprised.”

“You’re surprised?” I laugh, “I was actually there when it happened. I’ve never been more shocked by anything in my life.”

“I remember when you…” he blinks, dark-green eyes wrinkling at the corners, “well… I remember.”

“I do too.”

He’d read the article about the competition. He’d seen my picture. He’s not local, just passing through and thought he’d stop by… see if I’d actually gotten better at pouring coffee or if it had been a fluke or some kind of set up.

He’s with someone. I tell him so am I.

Before he goes, drinking what I believe to be the very best latte I’ve ever made in a career of making lattes, he tells me that he still has that brass monkey I gave him that night before that party.

We’d hung out in my room before walking over together, watching an episode of American Idol on my bed. He saw the monkey on my desk and asked me why I had something that ugly-slash-frightening watching over me when I sleep. I told him that I had no idea, which as true, and then I gave it to him.

And then said that now I’d had a reason to have kept it – so that I could give it to him.

It had been, looking back on it, accidentally one of my better lines.

I was twenty and stupid. I wanted him, I liked him, I thought he was good too… but I was loyal. And maybe I shouldn’t have been.

“It’s on my desk,” he laughs, “and it’s still hideous. Ten years later.”

“God… ten years?”

“Terrible, isn’t it?”

“Hmm…” I nod, “Yes and no.”

He nods, “I like that.”

I call him Tomwise when we say goodbye and he tells me I’m good, holding up that latte and grinning as he walks out of the door.


	9. The Liar.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Got it into my head for a while to write a Supernatural/Modern DA-AU. With Garrett and Marian alive as baddie-fighting twins. 
> 
> Why not?

Garrett twists and reaches back to grab one of the guy’s pillows. His back still hurts from last week when the car he was driving was so unceremoniously rolled over by an external party.

“And what about these?” Aedan’s attention is fixed on Garrett’s stretched, exposed side.

Each sunken scar is round and deep enough to fit the pad of a thumb into.

_Deep enough to have bled like a mother-fucker, too,_ Garrett thinks as he adjusts the pillow behind his shoulders. He’s had enough wine to smile about it tonight, and more than enough to answer the question too honestly. And too fast.

“A lion.”

He stops smiling before Aedan looks up at him.

“No,” he shakes his head in disbelief, “no way.”

Garrett goes stiff but Aedan keeps touching him anyway. Touching his scars.

Lightly.

Exploring.

Garrett shivers. Aedan notices.

“A lion bit you?” he asks softly, rolling to his side and tucking black hair behind his own ear.

“Bit,” Garrett swallows, feeling something inside start to go thin and weak, “And scratched.”

His shirt is off but his jeans are still on. Aedan, on the other hand, has been naked for a while.

“A scratch? And where,” Aedan lets his hand slip down across Garrett’s stomach, to the waist of his jeans, “is that scar?”

“Th-that one almost killed me.”

Aedan’s face changes then, and while the change is subtle and bordering on sympathetic, Garrett blushes and looks down, away from him.

He stammers softly, mumbling. His heart is hammering in his chest, in his throat, and still he’s still hard, still wants to be touched and felt and seen by this guy in his bedroom with Christmas lights tacked to the walls and a Radiohead poster and blue t-shirt jersey sheets on the bed. He wants all of that because it is normal.

Aedan, this guy that he met at the pub tonight and came home with, is normal.

He listens to Radiohead and sleeps in his own bed and pays rent. He has boxes of cereal in his kitchen; he has a kitchen.

Aedan’s life is normal and Garrett’s isn’t.

And these, all of these scars, are the undeniable record of that abnormal existence.

He can’t deny it. Not when Aedan’s thumbs fit into the teeth-marks in his side.

Not when he can’t even explain that yes, really a lion but not just an ordinary lion. A lion under the control of a demon. A lion that had already killed five people and was about to kill a sixth when I got there. A lion that bit me, here, and then ripped my thigh open, here. A lion that had claws that just barely missed my femoral artery. A lion that my sister killed before it could properly kill me.

He stutters again, softly, and he doesn’t know exactly what he’s even trying to say and his face and neck and chest get hot and red, just the way they have all the times this has happened to him in his whole damn abnormal life. When the words don’t come; when he tells the truth and it gets stuck because as true as it will ever be, it’ll never be normal.

Garrett has a stutter but only when he’s telling the truth.

He can’t say that.

He can’t say anything that’s true. So he lies and comes out easily. Clearly. And it sounds truer than the truth.

“No,” he laughs thickly, pulling Aedan in, curling his fingers against the back of his neck where the skin is hot and soft black hair curls softly, “It was a dog.”

“A big dog?”

“Yeah. Very.”

“How old were you?” Aedan kisses him, lips soft, breath hot, sliding one large flat hand over the bulge of Garrett’s cock, his balls, and further between his legs, pressing against him with fingertips and palm, kissing again below his navel.

Garrett gives into the feeling of the touch and the lie at the same time. He sighs and his eyes slip closed, “Ah… twenty-two.”

“Very big dog then,” he’s undoing the button on Garrett’s fly, “Bad dog.”

Garrett groans as Aedan’s fingers pull down the zipper. He arches into him and not away.

The lie lets him do that.

And it’s good then. Good enough to smile when his jeans are pulled down his legs.

And it’s good, even better, when there’s the heat of Aedan’s mouth on him through the cotton of his boxers.

Garrett sighs, “fuck,” letting his legs fall open.

Better. Truer.

But it’s when he’s naked, when Aedan’s pulled off his underwear and it’s just him, and him, under the glow of white Christmas lights and he sees that other scar, the lion scar, that is long and jagged. Bigger, wider, than anything a dog could have done to him, knotted and ugly where he’d been shredded from the top of his hipbone across the top of his leg and down to the inside of his thigh.

Aedan pauses.

But Garrett doesn’t feel that embarrassed heat from before and he doesn’t stutter and he doesn’t explain. He’s naked but he’s not exposed because of the big lie that he’s telling himself calmly in that moment. 

It was a dog. He’s someone else. Someone normal. _It was a dog._

When Aedan looks up at him he looks back, challenging him.

The lie lets him do that, too.

…

“Where were you last night?”

Marian’s already awake and curled up with Bela under a quilt on the sofa watching TV when he gets back to Bela’s house. It’s probably around 9:00 but he’s not sure.

He didn’t sleep at Aedan’s. Garrett left while he was taking a shower and then spent the rest of the night driving around by himself. This part of the country is so flat and he never gets over it. Where they grew up, there were hills and valleys and cliffs that dropped into the ocean.

There was a place he could run off of.

But not here.

So he drove on flat roads until the sun rose and then stopped by a bakery to get breakfast.

Garrett sets down a pink box on the table, “Out.”

“Made a friend?” Marian asks him, rubbing a faint smudge of eyeliner from the night before from Bela’s temple, “You’ve got that look.”

He shrugs.

“Made a sexy-friend?” she tries again, and when he doesn’t respond but opens the box instead she kisses Bela and gets up, wrapping the quilt around herself like a cloak. Bela follows her and they descend on the box together, tearing into the pastries inside.

“Sexy-friend or no, the important question is did you bring coffee?” Bela’s voice is thicker than normal, and she looks tired.

Late night then. He smiles, “I had some already but I’ll make a pot—”

“I’ll do it,” Marian says, licking jelly from the edge of a mostly demolished doughnut. 

“You make it way too strong,” he groans, “let—”

“No such thing,” she smiles, walking towards Bela’s kitchen like a queen wrapped in that quilt in a way that almost looks legitimately regeal.

She’s happy, he thinks, so… good late-night.

“Who was your friend?” Bela asks him, tearing a chocolate glazed in half and handing the bigger half to him.

“A guy named Aedan.”

“The Cousland!” she laughs warmly, “Oh, Garrett, you do have a type.”

“Oh, really? And what type is that?”

“Hmm,” she smirks, “Dark hair. Light eyes. Chivalrous. Boring.”

“He wasn’t… boring.”

She smiles at him, and adds gently, “Boring. And impossible. What’d you do last night, Garrett Hawke?”

“Had too much wine. Then I got lost,” he smiles, and says evenly and easily, “and then I found my way back.”

Because there are a few people who, for whatever reason, he can always tell the truth to.


	10. The Thief.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More SPN Modern DA-AU.
> 
> LOL.

When Marian was little, she wanted to be Catwoman when she grew up.

The imperative word being little.

She wanted to move like a cat and slice clean perfect circles into weight-sensitive glass cases containing Faberge eggs and rubies and crown jewels and slip them into black velvet bags and make narrow escapes. Then Marian got bigger. And then bigger still. Taller. Eventually, she was taller than her brother and the bigger she got, the less and less likely being a stealthy, slinky wall-scaling, air-duct crawling Catwoman became; the taller she got the less quiet she became and sneaking in general stopped being something she was good at so Marian outgrew Catwoman. Literally.

But she didn’t outgrow stealing.

In fact, quiet or not, stealing is one of the things she’s best at.

This is lucky for them because Garrett is terrible at it. It’s not that he’s not quiet. He’s way quieter, and way more likely to be found in an air-duct or scaling a wall, hopping a fence like it’s nothing where as she’s more likely to find a way to break through the fence.

Garrett fights with knives because he’s quiet enough to do it.

Marian has a shot gun. Which is definitely very un-Catwoman like of her.. and decidedly Marian of her.

She loots the bodies, and he knows about that. She pawns anything that isn’t cash. Watches. Rings. First edition Charles Dickens. Whatever. She has an eye for value after so many years, finding these little diamonds in the rough in people’s libraries and offices. Art that looks like it isn’t art. He knows less about that because she doesn’t tell him and he doesn’t ask.

She knows more about art than she lets on and, yes, it’s stealing plain and simple and with not a lot of honor, but there have been times when a small piece slipped from the desk of a victim and then sold to a grateful collector has paid for their gas for a year. Paid for the MRI he needed in Austin. Paid for sterile thread and suture needles and new brakes and paid for the really nice bottle of whiskey they split for Christmas.

It was a painting smaller than the palm of her hand that paid for the train ticket she needed to make it back to Lothering to watch the twins graduate from high school. She went alone and sat in the back of the stadium alone. She wore one of Dad’s old shirts (the cleanest one she has) and when the names Bethany Hawke and Carver Hawke were read over the PA system and they got diplomas she was there.

She was there when Bethany gave a speech about the future and goals and the road we’ve all traveled to get where we are today.

She’s grown-up but she’s not Catwoman. She’s just a thief with a shotgun who learned everything she knows about art from books she stole. She’s a thief in a man’s shirt at a high school graduation who steals just enough to cover the basics of what they both need to keep going down this road they’re traveling tomorrow.


	11. The Ghost.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More SPN Modern DA-AU.

The first thing he knows is the feeling of wind in his hair and the smell of wet, dark dirt.

_A forest._

He knows a forest at night and nothing else. Remembers nothing else. Nothing.

He opens his eyes and breathes in a forest, with dirt under his nails and wind in his hair and hunger.

He remembers hunger because he knows it now. First. Hunger because he is empty.

Then something new when he lifts his head. The taste of blood.

Metal.

Under.

His. Skin.

Not metal but something that is hard and aches like needles.

Sting. Pain. Burn.

Pain where his neck bends back. Where his wrists bend forward. Where his fingers claw into dark, wet dirt.

He has no name. He has no race. He has no body.

Only the pain of something like metal in his skin and the taste of blood and wind in his hair.

And dark, wet dirt.

He calls out, howls out, and no one answers.

A wolf.

Not one touches him or gives him a name.

A ghost.

On a forest floor.

Alone in the dark.

Until he ignites, howling, bright as day.

His skin catches fire but he doesn’t burn.

That is the first thing he learns; _he does not burn._


	12. 4 Times Bethany Didn't Say 'I Love You' and 1 Time She Did

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coffee, Black-verse Bethany stuffs.

Mom tucked her in that night and held both of her hands and kissed them just like she always did. Mom smelled good, like honey and lemon. Bethany asked her to leave the window open because it was a warm night and for a while as she was falling asleep, she could hear Garrett’s voice and Dad’s voice. They sat out on the patio together for hours after dinner and the conversation they’d all had in the living room.

That night, Garrett had cooked for them. When he put her plate down in front of her at the table, the peas were separated from the chicken by a neat even wall of mashed potatoes and that made her smile because he remembered. After they ate he asked them to go sit in the living room because he needed to tell them something.

She didn’t understand why he’d been so nervous. She was pretty used to seeing Garrett nervous but tonight was different because he was nervous with them and not with other people. He was never nervous with them. Mom told her as she was tucking her in that, for Garrett, it was a big deal to tell them.

Bethany didn’t think it was a big deal. Her big brother liked boys and not girls. She’d asked him if he had a boyfriend and he said that he didn’t but he would like to have one. That was fine with her as long as his boyfriend was nice and interesting and cute and wore nice clothes.

Bethany fell asleep quickly that night and when she got up later to go to the bathroom and get a glass of water she walked by the other bedroom doors. Mom and Dad’s door was closed but the light was on in their room. Carver’s was closed and she could hear him snoring.

Garrett’s room was dark and his door was wide open.

He had left his window open too. Garrett always had his bed under the window and she could see his face in the moonlight. He was awake, staring up at the ceiling with his hands folded across his chest. She saw his big feet sticking out from the end of his blankets and that made her smile.

She walked into his room and crawled into his bed next to him, leaving her half full glass of water on his night stand.

When she snuggled in next to him, he pulled her in and covered her up with his blanket.

“Hey, Gare-Bear,” she said quietly, settling her cheek on his shoulder, “you’ve got real big feet.”

“I know,” he sighed, “so do you though.”

She hugged him tighter, “Yeah. We both do.”

…

“I don’t think I like Gettysburg.”

That made Dad laugh.

“Oh no?”

Bethany shook her head and looked up at him, “No.”

It was so hot and she was bored. Garrett and Carver were both trailing behind Mom in the air conditioned gift shop being all sweaty and grumpy. Dad was sweaty too, wearing a t-shirt and shorts and a baseball hat. Dad never wore baseball hats but he’d gotten a really bad sunburn across his nose the day before and Mom had made him wear it.

Bethany looked at the silver and black hair on his arms and at his hands. Dad had always been a very big guy, tall and wide and strong and safe but for some reason that afternoon he seemed even taller. Wider. Stronger and safer. Even with a sunburned nose and messy goofy hair curling out from underneath his hat.

It was very late summer and school was going to start soon and Dad had pushed for this, for one last vacation together before they ran out of time to just get in the car and go somewhere none of them had ever been before. Dad didn’t like to plan vacations, he liked to just go. No plans. No expectations. Sometimes it was really fun and other times it was… Gettysburg.

“That’s okay, Monkey,” he said, “I don’t think anyone really likes Gettysburg.”

It was hot but she slipped her hand into his anyway and he squeezed her fingers.

“Come on,” he said, leading her away from the fence, “let’s find somewhere for you to buy me a cold drink.”

She laughed and ran ahead, pulling him after her.

…

His named was Mateo and he was perfect on a Saturday afternoon.

The kind of perfect that had always made her defensive and suspicious. Perfect was unrealistic and Bethany was, if nothing else, a realist. Bethany had never had any problem separating sex and love if she needed to. That was fine. Healthy. But with him speaking softly in Italian against her neck and promising her things that just for that moment in time she believed. Fully. Really. She took a chance and that felt better than his hands against her skin, his lips against her throat.

Such big promises.

And she let him in.

…

She was going to do it this way. On her terms.

But, _fuck_ fucking labor.

She wanted to walk and she wanted to walk alone but the midwife said that Mom should stay with her. She wanted to go outside so Mom lead her to a little open courtyard with a fountain and a tree and a pond with big orange and white koi fish that swam to the edge where she stood with her hands digging into the small of her back.

“You did this,” Bethany asked, exhaling in a huff, “more than once? Are you a masochist?”

Mom stepped up next to her, rubbing her between the shoulders, “I was delirious the first time… I didn’t remember the pain. All I knew was that I got out of a pool of blood and was had this adorable little blue-eyed baby.”

“And the second time?”

“Oh, fuck that. No… that time I remembered. Everything,” she laughed, “There were two of you and you were both enormous. It was like being eviscerated. Never again.”

Bethany laughed, too. Kind of.

Mom kissed her shoulder.

She took a moment then, holding her hands under her belly and closing her eyes, saying, “Hey, Monkey, please don’t hurt me any more than you absolutely need to,” then quieter, “I promise I’ll do the same.”

Which inadvertently made Mom cry for the first time that day but not for the last.

…

She danced with both of her brothers at the wedding.

Garrett was easy. He’d pull away from her and bust out some of his own ridiculous choreography and laugh and made her smile like an idiot and feel a deep little tug of sadness when he’d step back and twirl her the same way Dad had. And he smiled like Dad, looked and sounded like Dad but he felt like Garrett.

And when they parted he eventually managed to get Fen out with him. Fen who rolled his eyes and didn’t do much actually dancing (not nearly as much as Garrett) but moved really well.

And was cute. And interesting. And he dressed very well.

And he loved her brother.

Pretty much, Fen was everything she’d ever wanted for Garrett… even if he never really danced.

The bride had danced about enough and was sitting at the long table eating another slice of cake with her bare feet up in Gilly’s lap. Merrill was absolutely beautiful and absolutely showing and couldn’t have cared less.

They were naming him Max and neither she nor Gilly could stop smiling.

Bethany sat next to her mother who was really enjoying the champagne and watched Andy and Bela dancing together until he pulled her to her feet. She was wearing Bela’s earrings that night and they brushed across her bare shoulders as she moved, thin and gold and delicate.

And from there she saw Carver.

He was on the edge of the dance floor where it wasn’t as crowded. Concentrating, he held both of Grier’s hands while she stood on top of his feet, dancing and looking up at him with absolute love. Bethany managed to keep it together, watching them with her head on Bela’s shoulder, until Grier hopped off of his feet and Carver twirled her.

Carver didn’t look like Dad the way that Garrett did. He never had. But then, right then, she saw him. 

When Garrett scooped Grier up from Carver and spun off with her, Bethany cut in, taking Carver’s hands. He groaned and rolled his head back and refused to dance. He just swayed stiffly but didn’t pull away from her.

She held his face between her hands and told him, simply, “I love you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said.

But he swayed a little easier.


	13. Mare-Bear Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remember that time I wrote a version of Coffee, Black with a female!Hawke rather than a male!Hawke?

Marian hated the farmer’s market. She hated balloon animals and face painting and she found something really arrogant about organic yams and goat’s milk candles. Marian had nothing to do with the farmer’s market except that she worked in a bookstore that happened to be on the same street. Fine. Yes. Occasionally she’d sneak outside if she could get Andy to cover for her and buy a grilled ear of corn because that shit is delicious. (The only downside to eating an ear of corn in secret is the corn that inevitably got stuck in her teeth for the rest of her shift. But whatever. It’s not like Marian was trying to impress anyone. So what if she had corn in her teeth?)

The first time Marian saw him was at the bookstore. He came in on a Wednesday, at night, which meant that he had to bob and weave his way through the weekly farmer’s market outside. She did not, in fact, have corn in her teeth the night he came in. She may or may not have had a chocolate stain on her shirt… but no corn.

He had black hair and smelled like motor oil.

She was, like a quality employee, sitting on the ground in the erotica section flipping through something terrible when he, a paying customer, walked in. And then walked past her leaving that wafting motor oil smell.

He didn’t look at her or ask her for anything.

He just walked.

And smirked.

And that got her attention.

Marian set the book back on the shelf and, rather than standing up and being all obvious about it, crawled on her hands and knees to the edge of the shelf and peeked around it hoping to catch a glimpse of him walking away.

What she was not anticipating was him standing more or less directly in front of her just around the corner of the shelf. Wearing an obnoxiously well-fitted white t-shirt and jeans and boots that looked like they’d been worn for years in a really rugged and unassuming way, he looked down at her with bright green eyes.

Her throat went momentarily dry when he asked, in a completely unsurprised monotone, where he could find historical biography. Like this was normal. Like her crawling around in the smut section was totally not something to react to even a little bit.

She could have stood up, sure, but she didn’t. She was still there on the ground, on her hands and knees, looking up at him when she answered, “It’s, uh, over there,” she pointed, “behind Warfare but before US History.”

He blinked, nodded said thanks and walked away with his hands in his pockets towards Warfare and but not all the way to US History.

She crawled in the opposite direction, waiting until she was well out of his range of vision until she stood up. Andy rang him up. He later informed her while he was stir-frying their dinner and she was sitting on their couch with their fat lazy cat purring in her lap, that he had bought an Einstein biography and a bar of dark chocolate.

Marian thought were two very good purchases to make together.

While she was falling asleep that night, she imagined that guy reading his Einstein biography and eating dark chocolate. In a bath. In a clawfoot tub. It was way sexier than it had any right to be. She’d never tell anyone that, because it was weird and more than a little creepy, but she thought about it anyway until she fell asleep, fat lazy Pounce curled against the back of her knees.


	14. Mare-Bear Part 2

The second time she saw him she was near death.

Or, anyway, it felt that way.

It didn’t matter how much Target-brand Advil she took (and over the years she had taken enough Advil to start wearing a hole away in her stomach… which was charming) or how many heating pads she wore or what kind of mediation techniques her father had tried so ineffectually to teach her… Marian’s cramps were vicious. More than vicious; they were insulting, and cruel, and relentless dicks.

That day, she had work. By mid-morning, she was bent double, arms braced against the Visitor Information desk, forehead sweaty were she had it pressed against her forearm. When she was home and it got this bad she’d take one of a precious few Vicodin she had in her medicine cabinet… but at work that seemed like a less than great idea.

Andy, having been around for years of Marian-cramps, knew that she was better off standing than sitting… so he did not offer her his seat. He tried to talk about other things, bringing up topics that might rile her into enough annoyance to distract her. Fedoras. The show Cake Boss. DOMA.

It wasn’t working that day.

It was, unequivocally, a bad day.

She’d been diagnosed with Endometriosis when she was fifteen. It had been a blow she wasn’t entirely prepared for but her father had been even less prepared for it… he’d already been soldiering through as best he could on all those visits to a variety of gynecologists with his teenage daughter. It was hard to navigate the conversations at first and having a mom around to have those conversations with would have made things significantly easier… but that wasn’t the way it went. Not for the Hawkes. Malcolm had done, what he himself now proclaimed, a bang up job of it. He’d figured out Endometriosis and four rounds of mono and science projects and girl scouts and Carver’s weird Bear Grylls survivorman phase.

A school-group came in and she barely looked up while Andy greeted them and lead them off on a tour. Kirkwall’s history hardly seemed interesting enough to her to warrant a whole museum but people seemed to like it. A lot.

She’d have gone home, to the Vicodin and a much heavier duty heating pad than the one taped to the inside of her underwear, but she’d already racked up a lot of her sick days on days when she wasn’t technically sick. And she needed the paycheck. So she stayed, gritting her teeth and leaning against the desk. She managed to keep directing people from that position because it felt the best. A few people gave her confused looks. It really didn’t bother her because she could tell them how to get to a bathroom or the gift shop of the Hall of Chains (the most popular exhibit, disturbingly) well enough from there.

“Hello.”

She didn’t look up at first, waiting for the guy to finish asking what he was going to ask. But when he never did, she finally had to lift her head.

And, of course, it was him. And all she could think about was her weird creeper vision of him and Einstein and dessert in the bath.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” he said back, frowning just slightly, not out of anger it seemed but just… focus, “yeah, uh, I’m supposed to pick up a… chain.”

“A chain?”

“A chain.”

“Why are you picking up a chain?”

He shrugged, “I’m going to fix it.”

This answer puzzled her. Marian squinted at him, “You’re fixing a chain?”

“Yeah,” he laughed, kind of a chuckle, and she was disarmed enough to stand up, “Is it a historically significant chain you’re fixing?”

Standing up it was clear that he was, in fact, significantly shorter than him.

He looked up at her when he answered, “Yeah, seems that way,” and pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket.

Marian was taller than a lot of people. At 6’1” people loved to remind her of how tall she was… as if she might have, at some point, failed to notice or forgotten. Or they asked if she played basketball. She was lanky, aside from the hips and ass region, which she had apparently inherited from the women in the Hawke-line. Birthing hips and height, thanks to the Hawkes, the lank often attributed to the Amell side of her genetics.

In high school, it had been convenient that Andy was the exact same height as her; they saw eye to eye and were able to be just, very, very tall together (which was nice in prom pictures). Now, even though they were no longer dating they did live together and had for years which afforded her the opportunity to borrow his clothes, shirts mostly, when she ran out of clean ones (which was often).

Very occasionally, he’d borrow hers.

It was a fine arrangement.

She took the paper from him, eying him to be around 5’8” if she was to guess, and read it. His name was Leto (which was unexpected). He was apparently a welder. And he’d been hired, by the museum, to fix a chain.

He should have gone to the office in the back, but he didn’t.

While she was looking over the paperwork, slowly lowering herself back into her comfortable doubled-over position, he said, “You work at that store.”

“Which one?”

“The bookstore,” he said, “you work here too?”

“Seems that way,” she was shifting her weight back and forth between her feet.

He smirked, “Are you okay?”

“Superb.”

She handed him the paper back and directed him to the office in the back, the one he should have gone to in the first place.

He folded it back up and slipped it back into his pockets and she stared at the white ink on his arms. She hadn’t noticed before and she wasn’t sure how she’d missed it. Them. He had half-sleeves on both arms, the designs ending just above where his elbows bent; delicate thin intricate designs that she couldn’t entirely see all of. They were… lovely.

He was a little guy, but he was surprisingly muscular. Not bulky but… powerful. In the arms at least.

This was definitely going to change her weird bathtub scenario.

While she was staring at his arms, she smiled without meaning to.

He said thanks, again, and walked away from her. Again.

It was the second time she saw him and the first time she smiled at him.

He’d smelled different that time. Less like oil and more like hot metal.

As soon as he and his arms and his half-sleeves were gone, the cramps came right back to the forefront of her attention and she rested her head on her arms again.


	15. Lines.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little Coffee, Black drabble set in... the FUTURE.

“What—”

He looks up at me from the hotel bed and for just a second it’s twenty-something years ago and he’s looking up at me from a different hotel bed and all the air goes completely still in my tight lungs.

And I can’t even think about what I was going to say.

Or remember.

Or hypothesize about whatever it was.

The morning light that’s coming in through the wall-to-wall windows behind him is in his hair and on his skin and I stop because I am so fucking lucky. And have been. For all this time that seems to have gone by in a minute then. 

The second passes, as seconds are wont to do, and he’s Fen again. Fen who woke up before me to get some work done, hunched over his laptop in the dark because he didn’t want to wake me up because I drove the final leg of the trip last night while he slept in the car.

I did, though. Wake up. When he gets out of bed I always wake up, not because of the action of him moving around or pulling the sheets but just because something in my exhausted lizard brain goes into alert-mode when he’s not there… because it’s wrong. It’s cold. Empty. He’s supposed to be there.

_So fucking lucky, Hawke._

He frowns up at me, confused. He finishes with the laces on his shoe and then folds his hands together, waiting patiently and stubbornly for me to restart. I look at his fingers, where the white ink’s faded from the crisp lines I first saw, first knew and obsessed over and memorized, to more blurred ones. I look at his face, his mouth, at those dark eyebrows and the deep, deeper, crease between them and I smile.

He doesn’t smile back until I’ve dropped down to my knees in front of him, between his legs. My knees crack and crunch in the process like an old man’s but they’ve done it for years now and I’m not an old man. Not yet. And neither is he.

I look up at him and rest my arms, my open hands, on his thighs.

“What?” he asks softly, “You were going to ask me something.”

“Was I?”

“Yeah,” he leans in, his mouth close to mine, “you were.”

“What did I say?” I slide my hands up, “help me find my way back to my train of thought, Fen.”

He exhales, a laugh that I can’t hear but that I feel, “I think that train’s gone, Hawke.”

I nod, “You’re probably right.”

He kisses me, a hand curved and steady and right against the side of my neck; my lizard-brain is pleased.

“Where’d you go?” he asks, “Then?”

I shake my head, “Just here.”

The other hand comes up slowly, fingers gentle against my jaw, “I don’t believe you.”

I kiss him, there where I’m very aware I’m supposed to be, held between his hands, his, “I was just… having a profound epiphany about the passing of time.”

“Oh,” he groans, “just one of those?”

“Mmhmm,” my hands have reached his hips and my knees are starting to hurt and I can feel a spreading prickling numbness in my feet but I don’t want to move yet, leave yet, “the light in here’s really kind of… you looked—you look,” I open my eyes, focusing on his, that green that never fades or blurs, “we’ve known each other for a long time.”

He nods, thumbs moving back and forth slowly against my cheeks.

“Know me forever, okay?”

He doesn’t say anything to that, just pulls me in. It’s a hug but it’s more than that. Different than that. I can feel his heart beating, under the shirt and vest he’s wearing, under the lines of ink and scars and twenty-something years together. Same heart as always. Mine.

We do actually manage to leave the hotel on time. He asks me before closing the door behind himself if I have everything. I do. Tickets and everything.

He technically asks me twice.

Which I do appreciate. I’m… excited and nervous and have a lot of feelings about the whole… day. Everything. Bethany and Greir moved across the country just before she started high school (which I think had been harder for me than for Grier, or Bethany, or Mom…) and I just can’t believe it’s been four years that fast.

I can’t believe it’s been eighteen years that fast.

That she’s this grown-up person.

Mom and Bethany are already there and seated when we get in. There’s an empty seat next to Bethany where I assume Cullen’s sitting. I sit on her other side and Fen sits next to me.

Mom reaches across Bethany’s lap and hands me a folded graduation program.

And I realize, right then, what I forgot at the hotel.

Holding the program in my lap, I can’t make out the black text on the white paper. I try it at different distances, I mean… subtly. I don’t want to look like that guy… the old guy with the grey in his hair and his beard trying to read the program an inch from his face. And then at arm’s length. And back at one inch. The lines are too blurry and I… I give up on it, holding the fucking thing in my lap.

When Cullen comes back, making slow over-polite progress over people’s knees to get to his seat, I feel Fen’s elbow against my ribs and I look down.

Without saying anything he gives them to me. They just kind of materialize in his hands. The one thing I did forget in the hotel room.

My glasses.

He brought them.

I had also, as it turned out, forgotten them on his fiftieth birthday. Which, all things considered, wasn’t a huge deal… but there was a thing I’d intended to read, but… couldn’t… so… I improvised. Ridiculously. I had just started wearing them at that point and that pair was one of many that weren’t just forgotten but… lost. Mom has threatened on numerous occasions to get me old-grandma chains to keep them around my neck. I… really hope that she’s just kidding.

I take them from his hand and unfold them and slip them on. He’s smiling, that rare Fen smile that breaks out… not a grin or a smirk, just… a real smile.

“Thank you,” I say, opening the program and pointedly only looking at him out of the corner of my eye.

I feel him chuckle against my side, “Maybe if I’d asked a third time.”

“Try it next time.”

He laughs.

I read and I find Greir’s name. _Grier Malcolm Hawke_. Printed in crisp, unblurry, unfaded black font.


End file.
